Chicago Fell First: A Zombie Novel

Chicago Fell First: A Zombie Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: Chicago Fell First: A Zombie Novel Read Online Free PDF
Author: Aaron Smith
Tags: Zombie Apocalypse
realized in any practical way. His way of seeing things as assemblies of parts did him some good, though, as he found a career servicing and repairing those arcade games he had grown up loving so much. As the technology of the games evolved and they grew more sophisticated, so did Doug’s knowledge of them, and his career remained quite secure. He lived alone, as he knew he had to. He remained single and even his virginity remained intact, for he was not a man without conscience and he feared his secret fascinations even if he did not quite detest them, for they were a part of him. He was materially comfortable with his apartment and his car and his solid, dependable income. He was successful, to a blue-collar degree, by the time he reached thirty.
    Doug looked normal to everyone he met. He was tall and of average build, with a full head of dark hair and bright blue eyes, and a quiet, seemingly relaxed demeanor. He had no close friends, but was friendly to his acquaintances: the arcade owners, the clerks in the video game stores, the occupants of the neighboring apartments. They all thought of him as a moderately intelligent, polite young man who was very, very good at his particular profession. They figured he would meet a woman at some point, get married, buy a house, have a few kids, work his ass off until retirement age, putter around for a few decades, and die like the average American of his time and place.
    But Doug knew better.
    Sometimes, when he was out fixing gaming machines, a woman would walk by and he’d see the soft, supple epidermal exterior hiding all those wondrous inner workings and his head would float like he was swimming through the clouds and he would have to put his tools down and close his eyes and take a deep breath until she passed by.
    Yes, Douglas Clancy knew there would come a day when he could contain his true self no longer and the real Doug would burst forth and do what he had been born to do.
     
    Kacey Sherwood was not the suicidal sort, though she sometimes wished she was. In theory, it sounded so easy, such a relief; but in practice, it was something else entirely. Bellamy, Illinois was a little town far west of Chicago, closer to the border of Iowa than to Lake Michigan. Kacey hated Bellamy. She hated, hated, hated it all, but the main heat of her loathing was centered on the Mirage Diner. An appropriate name, she had sometimes thought, for she wished it was a mirage, an illusion, a dream from which she could awake, but it didn’t vanish with the night. Each morning when Kacey awoke, the Mirage was still there and so was the rest of Bellamy, Illinois. She felt tied to it, locked in place like a prisoner in cuffs. Stuck.
    Yet there she was again, another night in the diner, another night in the same stupid town she had lived in her whole life, another night waiting tables for a measly salary and tips that could be halfway decent or could suck. In the three years since high school had ended, she had vowed over and over again to get out of Bellamy, go to college somewhere and breathe some air that didn’t taste stale from its sameness. She had yet to make the break and she couldn’t understand what kept her from leaving.
    It wasn’t money or its lack that kept her chained to Bellamy. Not that she was rich, but she could have waited tables anywhere and managed to survive. It was more a matter of uncertainty as to what she would aim for, what she might concentrate on. She feared she would make the break only to decide that her path was the wrong one and turn back to face that awful little town again. Better to stay until the time was right, she had convinced herself, than to flee and face the prospect of coming back to Hell. 
    She had money, she had a brain, never doubting her intelligence, and she had a face that would help too, a face she had grown into quite well, though her opinion of her own looks occasionally slid back to the insecurities of her early teen years when she had
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